Root disease can rival fire and harvest in reducing forest carbon storage

Abstract

Abstract.Root diseases are known to suppress forest regeneration and reduce growth rates, and they may become more common as susceptible tree species become maladapted in parts of their historic ranges due to climate change. However, current ecosystem models do not track the effects of root disease on net productivity, and there has been little research on how the dynamics of root disease affect carbon (C) storage and productivity across infected landscapes. We compared the effects of root disease against the effects of other types of forest disturbance across six national forest landscapes, 1990-2011. This was enabled by a monitoring tool called the Forest Carbon Management Framework (ForCaMF), which makes use of ground inventory data, an empirical growth model, and time series of Landsat satellite imagery. Despite several large fires that burned across these landscapes during the study period, retrospective ForCaMF analysis showed that fire and root disease had approximately equal impacts on C storage. Relative to C accumulation that would have occurred in their absence, fires from 1990 to 2011 were estimated to reduce regionwide C storage by 215.3 ± 19.1 g/m 2 C, while disease in the same period was estimated to reduce storage by 211.4 ± 59.9 g/m 2 C. Harvest (75.5 ± 13.5 g/m 2 C) and bark beetle activity (14.8 ± 12.5 g/m 2 C) were less important. While long-term disturbance processes such as root disease have generally been ignored by tools informing management of forest C storage, the recent history of several national forests suggests that such disturbances can be just as important to the C cycle as more conspicuous events like wildfires.

Warning Signals of Adverse Interactions between Climate Change and Native Stressors in British Columbia Forests

“…Adding to the uncertainty in future stand productivity forecasts is the fact that not all maimed tree volume is lost. Damaged trees with poor stem form significantly reduce saw-log lumber recovery and from a timber productivity viewpoint represent a loss of growth, similar to non-lethal growth reductions associated with pathogens such as root disease, which are difficult to model [47]. We cannot state with certainty that the higher than expected rates of loss we observed have been influenced by climatic changes.…”

Classifying forest inventory data into species-based forest community types at broad extents: exploring tradeoffs among supervised and unsupervised approaches

“…Thus, the FIA classification is a supervised approach, and the FIA groupings are static and wellrecognized. The FIA forest types and forest type groups are widely used in maps of forest resources, ecosystem services, pest impacts and risk, and to inform initial conditions in forest landscape dynamics modeling studies (Ruefenacht et al 2008;DeSantis et al 2013;Duveneck et al 2015;Healey et al 2016).…”

New problems in dendropathology – new and invasive pathogens

“…Samuti on teada, et kahjurite ja patogeenide tõttu emiteerivad kahjustatud puistud süsinikku enam kui seovad (Kurz et al, 2008), biootilistest kahjustajatest tingitud häiringud mõjutavad seega märkimisväärselt ka metsa süsiniku üldist varu või selle muutusi (Hicke et al, 2012). Teiseks näiteks hinnati hiljuti ühe võrreldava metsaala piires Põhja-Ameerikas juure-mädanikest tingitud süsiniku emissiooni võrreldavaks isegi tulekahju ja lageraie mõjuga (Healey et al, 2016) (Dubin & Walper, 1967;Bassett, 1969;Lang & Karadžić, 1987;Drenkhan et al, 2014a;Mullett & Fraser, 2015). Ülalnimetatud globaalsest andmebaasist järeldub, et enim kahjustab punavöötaud mägi-(P. mugo Turra) ja musta mändi (P. nigra Arn.)…”